Adaptive control of the human-wheelchair system through brain signals

Abstract

This work presents an adaptive dynamic control to solve the path following problem for the human-wheelchair system, allowing people with lower and upper extremity impairments to move a wheelchair through brain signals. The desired velocity of the wheelchair is considered as a function of the disregard of the person to move the robotic wheelchair. Additionally, the kinematic and dynamic modeling of a human-wheelchair system where it is considered that its mass center is not located at the wheels’ axis center of the wheelchair. This controller design is based on two cascaded subsystems: a kinematic controller with command saturation, and an adaptive dynamic controller that compensates the dynamics of the human-wheelchair system. Stability and robustness are proved by using Lyapunov’s method. Experimental results show a good performance of the proposed controller as proved by the theoretical design.